THE STEINWAY 
 COLLECTION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/steinwaycollectiOOhune 
 
This is the last published work of 
 yames Huneker 
 
 The edition is limited to Five Thousand 
 
 copies of which this is No.. 
 
 Presented by STEINWAY & SONS to 
 
(H 
 
a 
 
 STEINWAY COLLECTION 
 of PAINTINGS by 
 AMERICAN ARTISTS 
 
 rOQErHETi^ WITH 
 
 PROSE PORTRAITS 
 
 of the QTifAT COMPOSETiS by 
 JAMES HUNEKER 
 
 T*u b it s hed by 
 STEI N WAY ^ SONS 
 
 5^ 
 
 W 
 
COPYRIGHT, I 919 
 BY 
 
 THE STEINWAY COMPANY 
 
R^E £ D E 
 
 PRELUDE that praises pi Siures should be expressed 
 in terms of tone; but as the present colleSiion is a pcean 
 ^Mi^ honor of great composers and their music, other than 
 sober prose^pould be inutile. Itlppasan admirable idea of 
 w Steinway &f Sons to enlist the sympathetic co-operation 
 of certain <^merican artists in the creation oj pi Siures 
 that '\vould evoke musical l^isions; for music is visionary, notwithstanding 
 its primal appeal to the ear. W alter T^aterlpoas perfeSily justified when he de- 
 scribed music as an art to Ipphich the other arts aspire, ^^^^(eyertheless, to invest 
 tonal arabesques^ith form and color has always proved a hazardous experi- 
 ment, because it presupposes a knowledge of the theme on the part of the spec- 
 tator, and a felicitous interpretation on the part of the artist. Yet an experi- 
 ment worthy of trial; above all, an interesting one. It livas Fran^jQis^ who 
 declared that his ambition Ippas to play in the Salon Qarre of the J^uvre, 
 that treasure gallery,^ here to the challenging glances ofT>a %Jinci, (jior- 
 gione, '^^^embrandt, Titian, T^aolo ^Veronese, ^I{afhael and other miraculous 
 creations, he '\vould discourse his own magical music. IV z have no -Qis;^ now 
 to play his homage to the Steinway piBures, but if he Ippere to revisit these 
 glimpses of the moon, he l^ould find himself at ease in this assemblage. How 
 he Ippould reveal the colossal music-dramas of agner, the symphonic scenes 
 of 'Beethoven, the tender and poetic songs of Schubert, Qonjure up the thrill 
 he '^^ou Id arouse by his dramatic performance of the £rl-king. ^^^binstein^ 
 cJ)(Cendelssohn, and the thrice-subtle Qhopin he ^ould interpret; stately 
 Handel and romantic <t^cT)owell; '^erlio^and <ty)(£o^rt, storm-cloud and 
 sunshine, he Ippould ma/^e live again, andUerdi, too, master of operatic cli- 
 maxes. That no one ever played J^s^ like 4^s^ is musical history. W z long 
 to put backet he hands of the clock^of Time. 
 
'^ut let us not tarry too long in this region of pleasing surmise. ThepiSlures 
 herein must play themselves in the imagination of the onlooker. They are 
 largely illustrational as befits their subjeSis. ^h(ormal canons of art that pro- 
 scribe the mingling of two dissimilar arts should be forgotten and the mi?id left 
 unhampered to enjoy the fantasy of the conception. one but a poet could 
 dare bend the bow of such a Ulysses as ^erlio^ Or the overarching utterances 
 of^eethoven^ can they be even hinted atf <^ll styles may be noted,no painter 
 was asked to conform to any set scheme. Homely pathos^ tragic abandon^ na- 
 ture in her sweetest zApril garb, the roar of the Erl-kjng s icy blast, the sheer 
 gossamer loveliness of the <:JJ)(Cidsummer Night' s 'Dream, the fierce onset of 
 battling Indians, Handel and his flowing Fire Fugue, the death of cJhCo^rt, 
 the fevered vision of Qhopi?i, '^B^b in stein and his royal auditors, J^st^ and 
 W agner, and again J^s^^, the aged magician weaving his spells in the lone- 
 liness of his latter years, Uerdi and his tropical music — here are composers 
 from many lands, who have held the Ipporld in thrall for a century and 
 more. need to emphasise their eminence. <L^usic lovers in <iylmerica will 
 welcome the evocations of these musicians set forth by the brush of native 
 painters and illustrators of renown. '^j^nd Steinway ^ Sons are quite quali- 
 fied in presenting these piFiures.<tAre they not artists themselves in the produc- 
 tion of an instrument that rivals in tonal charm an exquisite Stradivarius! 
 
EORGE SAND, the novelist, played the role of 
 maternal secretary to the Polish composer, Frede- 
 ric Frangois Chopin. She it was, even before Liszt, 
 who interpreted his personality and music in her 
 supple prose. The history of her life tells us of her 
 sojourn on the Isle of Majorca with the sick, ner- 
 vous composer. It was at the deserted monastery 
 of Valdemosa, which for him was full of terrors and phantoms, but 
 only interesting to her more robust imagination. Often on returning 
 from her nocturnal rambles with her children she would find him at 
 the keyboard, pale, his eyes haggard, hair on end, unable to recognize 
 them at once; and then, after an attempted smile, he would play 
 sublime things, terrible, heart-rending ideas that had obsessed him in 
 his hours of sadness and solitude. Some are the visions of deceased 
 monks and the sounds of funeral chants, which beset his fancy; others 
 are sweet and melancholy — they came to him in the hours of sunshine 
 and health, with the noise of the children's laughter under the window, 
 the distant sound of guitars, the warbling of the birds among the humid 
 foliage, and the sight of the pale, little roses on the snow. Others, again, 
 are of a mournful character, and, while charming the ear, lacerate 
 the heart. Thus George Sand, concerning those compositions modestly 
 entitled by the composer, 'Pre/Wgi". Of them Robert Schumann wrote: 
 " I must signalize them as most remarkable. I will confess I expected 
 something quite different, carried out in the grand style of his studies. 
 It is almost the contrary here; these are sketches, the beginnings of 
 studies, on, if you will, ruins, the feathers of eagles, all strangely inter- 
 mingled. But in every piece we find in his own hand, * Frederic 
 Chopin wrote it.'" 
 
 The T^reludes were published in 1839, the same year of the trip 
 to the Balearic Island; nevertheless, there is internal evidence to prove 
 
that most of them had been composed before. This fact upsets the 
 legend about the music-making at Valdemosa. George Sand relates 
 that once, with her son Maurice, she had gone to Palma, where she 
 was overtaken by a storm. Chopin's anxiety increased as they failed 
 to return. Despairingly he improvised the famous T^relude in D flat, 
 his face bathed in tears. After much danger and delay the mother and 
 son entered late at night his monastic cell. He called out as if startled 
 from the dream of a somnambulist: Ah! I knew well that you were 
 dead ! " He later told her that he had seen, as if in a vision, all the hard- 
 ships she had experienced. Like the young artist in the Fantastic 
 Symphony of Berlioz, Chopin dreamed that he was dead. He saw him- 
 self drowned in a lake; heavy, ice-cold drops of water fell at regular 
 intervals upon his breast; and when his attention was called to drops 
 of water that were actually falling at regular intervals upon the roof, 
 he denied having heard them. He was even vexed at what Madame 
 Sand translated by the vivid term. Imitative Harmony. He protested 
 against the puerilities of these imitations. His genius was full of mys- 
 terious harmonies of nature, translated by sublime equivalents into 
 his musical thought, and not by a servile repetition of external sounds. 
 His Prelude was indeed full of the raindrops which resounded on the 
 sonorous tiles of the monastery, but they were transformed in his im- 
 agination and his music into tears falling on his heart. 
 
 There is no denying the persuasive rhetoric of Madame George, 
 but is the T) Jiat Prelude the T^indrop T*re/ude f Rather is it not 
 the sixth Prelude in S minor f The favorite one in T) flat has always 
 seemed to be the one of which Sand wrote : " Dead monks who rise and 
 pass before the hearer, in solemn and gloomy pomp;" while the 'F^re- 
 lude in S minor, though a mere sketch in comparison of the idea elab- 
 orated in the flfteent.h l^relude above mentioned, is the foundation of 
 the picture in which the drops of rain fall at regular intervals; the 
 echo principle. A continual patter which reduces the mind to a state 
 of sadness; a melody full of tears is heard through the rush of rain, 
 adds a sentimental commentator. The artist has seized upon the most 
 vivid moment of the story, the unexpected entrance of Madame Sand 
 and her children, as Chopin stands in anguish rooted before his piano. 
 
Copjright ^ igiS 
 
WA g R ^ £ I s Z."^ 
 
 k^y^^-A^^ FT 1U A R is a little city rich in artistic memories. 
 
 Here Goethe and Schiller, with a galaxy of poets, 
 ft^ philosophers, musicians, once held sway. Later, 
 this tiny Athens on the Ilm, as it has been called, 
 WJMm ^g^i^ became an artistic center. Music was en- 
 throned. Franz Liszt, a magnetic focus, drew to 
 S him pianists, violinists, composers, conductors; in- 
 deed, modern music, incarnated in Wagner, Berlioz and Liszt, was 
 given its primal impulse by the extraordinary Hungarian virtuoso, 
 innovator — he is the father of the Symphonic Poem — and charming 
 man of the world. His efforts in behalf of the young struggling Dresden 
 conductor, Richard Wagner, are a testimony to his unselfishness and 
 devotion to lofty ideals. The friendship that was cemented by Liszt's 
 aid to the political exile and revolutionist, Wagner, lasted their lives 
 long. And if Wagner proved ungrateful it must be set down to tem- 
 peramental defects, to the bitter disappointments and reverses, fol- 
 lowed by a turn of fortunes, startling enough to upset the moral equi- 
 librium of a less impressionable man than the great composer. But 
 Liszt was as true as the needle to the compass. In Paris the encounter 
 of the men had been casual. Liszt's brilliant career was then at its 
 apogee. Wagner, unknown, making a bare living by arranging medi- 
 ocre operatic tunes for the cornet, and writing letters to a journal in 
 Germany, rather resented the superior position of Liszt. Perhaps he 
 was envious. No matter, Liszt did nothing that could be construed as 
 patronizing the other. When he heard Wagner's first "suc- 
 
 cessful " work, he became an ardent Wagnerite; Liszt was, after Richard 
 himself, the original Wagnerian. He did more, he produced T'ann- 
 hduser at the Weimar Opera House, and then the irritable composer 
 fully realized that he had won a friend. 
 
 More followed, Wagner became involved in the Dresden up- 
 
rising of 1849 wanted by the police." He, the conductor of 
 
 the Royal Opera House, had become a "traitor." In reality, his part 
 in the affair was not significant, being more a gesture of revolt than 
 of actual deeds. He rang the bells in a church as a signal for the insur- 
 rection, and, so it is said, bravely crossed the firing line to get a water- 
 ice. The sybarite and socialist in the make-up of this strange character 
 were equally balanced. Disguised as a coachman, Wagner hurriedly 
 left Dresden and went to Weimar, where, temporarily at least, he was 
 sure of a refuge and ahearty welcome. Liszt did not fail him, and openly 
 expressed his delight. But the exile's stay was brief; he traveled under 
 an assumed name and vv^ith the passport of another. Soon he was 
 smuggled across Zurich, then proceeded to Paris. However, he did not 
 leave Weimar before he recognized the offices, artistic and pecuniary, 
 of the large-souled Liszt. He heard from those marvelous singing 
 fingers music the living sounds of which were novel to him. The 
 painter shows us the weary, almost broken-hearted, composer touched 
 to the very core by Liszt's interpretations. And with an artistic license 
 he has made the pianist the younger of the two. No wonder Wagner 
 later wrote that as his eye fell on the score of J^hengrin "a pitiful 
 feeling overcame me that these tones would never resound from the 
 deathly-pale paper; two words I wrote to Liszt." And the answer 
 swiftly came. J^hengrin was already in rehearsal, and August 20, 1850, 
 witnessed its premiere. Franz Liszt had again demonstrated his noble 
 love of beautiful art. 
 
OUBTLESS, Franz Liszt, greatest of all pianists, 
 composer of startling originality, a pioneer and 
 path-breaker in modern music, above all, Liszt the 
 magnificent and big-souled, had his lonesome, lat- 
 ter years, for in all the hurly-burly of his life he still 
 found time for meditation. He shared the last two 
 decades of his existence between Rome, Budapest 
 and Weimar. The little Thuringian town was his preferred resting 
 place. There he entertained both genius and royalty; there, with a 
 patience positively angelic, he listened to those birds of passage, young 
 pianoforte students, spread their wings before making their initial 
 flights in the concert halls of the world. Much talent passed through 
 his hands, much that was mediocre must have been a thorn in the side 
 of this almost saintly artist, who practiced what he preached— that out 
 of the hundred if ninety and nine proved failures, one grain of wheat 
 was worth winnowing from the chafF. And such was his luck that in the 
 vast and varied list of his pupils there occur such names, glorious in 
 the annals of pianism, as Tausig, Von Biilow, Rubinstein — Anton 
 certainly profited by his soj ourns atWeimar— JosefFy, Pachmann, Rosen- 
 thal, Friedheim, Reisenauer, D' Albert, Sgambati, Sofia Menter — and 
 how many others, composers as well as conductors? In Weimar Liszt 
 walked and talked, smoked strong cigars, played, prayed — he never 
 missed daily mass — and composed. After rambling over Weimar and 
 burrowing in the Liszt museum one feels tempted to call Liszt the hap- 
 piest of composers. A career without parallel in the history of music, a 
 victorious general at the front of his army of ivory keys, a lodestone for 
 men and women, a poet, diplomatist, ecclesiastic with the sunny nature 
 of a child, loved by all who met him, and himself envious of no one — 
 surely the fates forgot to spin their evil threads at the cradle of Liszt. 
 Nevertheless, he was not a happy man. He had his temperamental 
 
daemon; he was the victim of the blackest ingratitude, and from 
 quarters least expected, from those he had most helped. Worst of all, 
 he was not recognized during his life-time except by the "happy few" 
 as the remarkable composer that he was; and even after his death 
 recognition grudgingly came. Today he has fallen into his natural 
 historical perspective, though outshone by Richard Wagner, who was 
 in his debt for musical ideas as well as material assistance; and in the 
 domain of the Symphonic Poem, his most significant contribution to 
 art, Richard Strauss quite o'er-crows him. His philosophical resigna- 
 tion need not blind us to the hardship of his fate— perhaps the fate of 
 many forerunners or transitional types. But Richard Strauss plays on 
 the nerves, Liszt touches our heart. 
 
 At the old house standing in Weimar park, where Goethe and- 
 Schiller promenaded, there is a veritable museum of mementoes. What 
 a collection of musical manuscripts, trophies, jewels, pictures, orders 
 of nobility and letters! There may be seen besides the numerous cases 
 containing gifts from all the crowned heads of Europe, the scores of 
 Liszt's C/iristuSy Faust Symphony, Orpheus, Hungaria, T)eath T)ance, 
 z^lftountain Symphony, and marble casts of Chopin and Liszt's hands. 
 Also Liszt's favorite piano, the Steinway. 
 
 As depicted in the present canvas, he dreams of his past triumphs; 
 of the three women who filled his life — Caroline St. Criq, Countess 
 d'Agoult and Princess Wittgenstein; of his trials, sorrows and ultimate 
 peace in the arms of Mother Church. The latter years are at hand, he 
 is on the threshold of old age. The weary wonder-worker has, like 
 Prospero, laid down his wand; the wizard Merlin is in the toils of 
 Time. Ring down the curtain, the comedy is ended! 
 
C1> O WE J^L 
 
 DWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL was 
 not only a noble character whose ideals were of like 
 nobility, but he was a composer of whom America is 
 proud. And naturally enough. A pianist of the first 
 rank, he composed music that is romantic, is real- 
 istic, and truly native, as may be appreciated in the 
 8f^y)(Cinor Orchestral Suite, called the Indian. Else- 
 where I have described him as a belated romantic; he is only modern 
 in his employment of technical devices, but the spirit of his melodies, 
 their sweetness, grace, dreaminess, above all, their cavalier qualities, 
 are purely romantic. He was by blood and temperament northern 
 racial, and it is reflected in his four piano sonatas, the ^AQrse, f^/ticy 
 Heroic and Tragic sonatas, his most significant contribution to music. 
 But there was also another MacDowell; the poet, his soul overflowing 
 with tenderness and caprice, who gave us the lyrics and the minor piano 
 pieces. A fragrant fancy informs them, a poesy that is seldom encoun- 
 tered outside the pages ot Schumann or the naive utterances of Grieg. 
 With the latter, MacDowell felt the cold northern night skies, punc- 
 tured by few large stars; felt the shock of warring hosts about the 
 misty, tremendous ramparts of the Scandinavian Walhalla. And, like 
 Schumann, he could fill a song with the shy sweetness of a wild rose. 
 In his two piano concertos with orchestral accompaniment we come 
 upon a new man, the virtuoso MacDowell. Brilliant, dramatic, these 
 works stem from Franz Liszt— of whose Symphonic Poems he was an 
 admirer, an admiration, be it said, that was heartily returned by the 
 aged Merlin of Weimar. And how MacDowell played the solo parts 
 of these compositions! 
 
 A larger, more powerfully conceived canvas is his Indian Suite 
 for orchestra, the subject of the present picture. In the score the themes 
 are of Indian origin, deriving from the ritual and songs of various tribes. 
 
For example, he has told us that while the first movement, the Jl^end^ 
 was suggested by the "Miantowona" of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the 
 themes are from an Iroquois harvest song. The J^^e Song is from the 
 Iowa tribe, with its aboriginal syncopated rhythm. In War Time, the 
 ensuing movement, is precisely the episode that intrigued the interest 
 of the present painter. Curiously enough, its tune is less in Indian 
 characteristics than its companion, though it is said to have been sung 
 by the Atlantic Coast Indians; they believed it to be a melody heard 
 in the heavens before the coming of the white race. It was thought to 
 be a supernatural warning. The war-song and a woman's dance of the 
 Iroquois conclude this fascinating, picturesque composition. Mac- 
 Dowell is the pioneer in modern music of aboriginal Americans, the 
 Indians. 
 
 The canvas of the painter is semi-fantastic. A battle furiously 
 rages, let us imagine, between the Utes and Cheyennes. It has lasted 
 for several days. The slaughter is dire. From the sky, so each combat- 
 ant fondly believes, his war god looks down with pagan impassivity 
 upon the conflict, the ancestor spirits of the earthly fighters. The fly- 
 ing arrows might be the swirl of the violins, though there is no futile 
 attempt at literal transcription. But the spectator with a grain of im- 
 agination is bound to overhear the crash of drums and trumpets, the 
 cries of the warriors, and the weeping of the women in the tepees. A 
 stirring moment both in the orchestra and within the frame of the canvas. 
 
UDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN was a profound 
 lover of nature in all her phases. He gloried in 
 the sunshine and did not fear the shade; once he 
 angrily refused an umbrella, preferring to walk bare- 
 headed in a rain storm. The first man who marched 
 through the London streets with an open umbrella 
 was mobbed. In Vienna the composer of the Heroic 
 symphony was looked upon as suspiciously eccentric for not carrying 
 one. Other days, other ways. He incurred, too, the disreputable title 
 of republican because in company with Goethe he did not doff his 
 hat to royalty. At Baden when in search of lodging he asked: "How 
 is this? Where are your trees?" "We have none." "Then the house 
 won't do for me. I love a tree more than a man." He said of himself: 
 "No man on earth loves the country more. Woods, trees and rocks 
 give the response which man requires. Every tree seems to say: < Holy, 
 holy.' Any one who has an idea of country life can make for himself 
 the intentions of the author without any titles." This particularly 
 applies to his sixth symphony, the l?astoral^ of which he said: "Not a 
 picture, but something in which are expressed the emotions aroused 
 in men by the pleasures of the country, or in which some feelings of 
 country life are set forth." It may be remarked in passing that he did 
 not disdain the imitation in tones of natural sounds. This same ^^j- 
 toral Symphony, with its serenity, its suggestion of open air, innocent 
 merry-making, the singing of birds, the sudden thunder and the real- 
 istic storm, the hymn of thanksgiving and the joyous peasants footing 
 a dance, is it not, after all, a perfect specimen of programme music? 
 
 Beethoven never missed his daily walk when living in Vienna. 
 His body-servant, Michael Krenn,has told us of the last summer spent 
 by the composer in his brother's house at Gneixendorf, and quoted by 
 Grove. He spent much time in the open air, from six in the morning 
 
till ten at night roaming about the fields with or without his hat, and 
 his sketch book in hand; shouting and flourishing his arms, completely 
 carried away by the inspiration of his ideas. One of his favorite prov- 
 erbs was, " The morning air has gold to spare." Certainly this Pas- 
 toral Symphony is pervaded by vivifying ozone. His diaries, says Grove, 
 and sketch books contain frequent allusions to nature. In one place 
 he mentions seeing daybreak in the woods, through the still undis- 
 turbed night mists. In another we find a fragment of a hymn, "God 
 alone is our Lord," sung to himself " on the road in the evening, up and 
 down among the mountains," as he felt the solemn and serene influ- 
 ences of the hour. The most beloved of all these spots, the situation of 
 his favorite inn, "The Three Ravens," is more than once referred to by 
 him as the "lovely divine Briihl." Every summer he took refuge from 
 the heat of Vienna in the wooded environs of Hetzendorf, Heiligen- 
 stadt, or Dobling, or in Modling, or Baden, farther away. This particu- 
 lar spot from which he drew his inspiration lor the T^astoral Symphony 
 was the Wiesenthal between Heiligenstadt and Grinzing, to the west 
 of Vienna. "Here," he said, "I wrote the Scene by the Brook, and the 
 quails, nightingales and cuckoos around about composed along with 
 
 me. 
 
 In the picture we see him bareheaded at the edge of a brook; 
 there is the sound of running waters in the Brook scene of this Sym- 
 phony ; " the ^rook," he calls it. It is a beautiful summer day. 
 Nature wears her gayest garb. The tone-poet drinks in the lovely 
 scene. "The larger the brook, the deeper the tone," he wrote in his 
 note book. And he depicted this feeling in his music, though he has 
 warned us in this particular Symphony that it is "more expression of 
 feeling than painting." But on Beethoven's varied palette he mixed 
 emotion with his colors, and the world is richer by a masterpiece. 
 Deep calling unto deep. Beethoven and Nature. 
 
'B£\L10Z 
 
Ctf;right, iqiS 
 
f^^^^ECTOR BERLIOZ, of the flaming locks, eagle's 
 beak, and flaming soul, thus wrote of himself and 
 fhis art: "The dominant qualities of my music are 
 ^passionate expression, inward ardor, rhythmical ani- 
 jmation and the unexpedted." But he forgot to add, 
 ) exaggeration. He was nothing if not melodramatic. 
 His rival, Richard Wagner, came nearer the truth 
 when he said of Berlioz: "An immense inner wealth, an heroically 
 vigorous imagination, forces out as from a crater a pool of passions; 
 what we see are colossally formed smoke clouds, parted only by light- 
 ning and streaks of fire, and modeled into fugitive shapes. Everything 
 is prodigious, daring but infinitely painful." Prodigious is the word 
 that best expresses the genius of this great Romantic, a Victor Hugo 
 of tone. His literary gifts were superior to Wagner's, yet Wagner it is 
 who summed up the French composer. His frescoes are orgies. His 
 music is like massive blocks of granite juxtaposed. It never seems to 
 flow, but rests in monumental Egyptian rigidity. There is powerful 
 characterization in the Fantastic Symphony and many extravagances. 
 A nightmare set to music within an epical frame. In his K^g J^ar 
 overture, one of his works that best stands repetition, there are, as 
 Hanslick puts it, the forced, the hollow, and even the trivial beside the 
 most powerful impulses. A passionately stirred inner life leads here to 
 violently moving exclamations, but to no connected life. You think 
 of Berlioz in terms of the superlative. He is volcanic, oppressively agi- 
 tating, frightful. He worshiped Shakespeare and Byron, but not Bach. 
 His scores are strangely deficient in plastic polyphony. But if he is 
 sensational, he is also picturesque. He conceived music pictorially. He 
 was a painter, rather than a composer. He was as much obsessed by 
 the poetic idea as the melodic. His orchestra is highly colored. He is 
 the father of modern orchestration. 
 
His life was a mad dream, full of sorrows and misunderstandings 
 and poverty. He loved like a madman, cooled off hastily. He had the 
 temperament of the ever unsatisfied, unhappy artist. His Fantastic 
 Symphony yW\t\i the sub-title ^^<i^n Episode in the Life of an ^rtist^^ (the 
 second part of the Episode is "Lelio, or the Return to Life"), is auto- 
 biographical, not in the precise sense, but as giving us a panoramic 
 glimpse of his disquieted soul. In it he depid:s a young artist of lively 
 imagination who sees a beautiful woman. He loves her desperately. 
 She realizes his ideal. He is pursued by a fixed idea of her, a musical 
 motive that haunts all the movements of the symphony. There are 
 dreams and passions, a ball-room, a scene in the fields, a storm, and 
 then, convinced that his love is not returned, he poisons himself with 
 opium. Follows a dream within a dream, a nightmare superimposed 
 on a drugged brain. The poison does not kill; it starts whirring within 
 the wretched chambers of his mind a picture, one worthy of morbid 
 Edgar Poe. He has murdered the beloved one. He has been tried and 
 condemned. He sits bound in a tumbril followed by an infuriated mob, 
 the sky of his fancy flooded by infernal shapes. The wraith of the dear 
 dead woman faithfully attends him as the march to the scaffold begins. 
 The fixed idea sings in his ears. Bells toll funereally. The T^ies Irae is 
 chanted, his day of wrath is at hand. Then the fall of the axe on the 
 block, and all is over, except a last nightmare; a dream of the night 
 of the Witches Sabbath, a dream after death in which his fixed idea is 
 burlesqued, and ending with a travesty of the hymn. You look for a 
 final curtain, it is all so hideously dramatic. To translate this music, 
 which is itself a translation from a picture, back to the pictorial plane 
 is well-nigh impossible. How the artist has achieved his task in evok- 
 ing a most fantastic vision may be seen in the present canvas, with its 
 mad riot and struggling shapes. It is the March to the Scaffold re- 
 orchestrated in color. 
 
^ O \f 
 
 IKE all celebrated men, Mozart had his legend. For 
 one thing, he did not in life resemble his portraits. 
 Beethoven is another victim of the whim of the 
 painters, who made of him a mawkish posing hero. 
 In reality he was a peasant as to exterior, and his 
 rough manners did not dispel the impression; but 
 T^aa^^T^^a sublime peasant. Mozart must have revealed a 
 more attractive personality. Yet he was neither imposing nor hand- 
 some. Insignificant in figure, his mobile features atoned for his lack of 
 presence. Nevertheless, we are usually shown a Mozart of archangelic 
 beauty, a beauty more feminine than virile, and with little suggestion 
 of the mercurial man whose music may be called immortal. The Rus- 
 sian novelist Turgenev said that there were at least a thousand prin- 
 cesses in whose arms Chopin was supposed to have died, and there 
 must be a thousand painters who selected as a subject the death-bed 
 of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 
 
 It is a theme always provocative of interest, this dramatic ending 
 of a marvelous musician at an early age. How often have we not looked 
 at that operatic ensemble — the moribund composer surrounded by his 
 sorrowing family and friends. A huge chorus supplemented by an 
 orchestra deliver the solemn and tragic measures of the T(e^uiem^ upon 
 the pages of whose manuscript the ink is hardly dry. Such a volume 
 of sound would have waked the dead, or speedily sent to his grave the 
 dying man. It is very effective artistically, but it is not entirely vera- 
 cious. Mozart did compose his T{e^uiem during the last days of his too 
 brief existence. The composition of the work was interrupted by spells 
 of fainting. He was in such a morbid condition,superinduced by worry, 
 - overwork, excitement, not to mention dissipation, that he experienced 
 hallucinations. He believed that he had been poisoned, whereas the 
 cause of his death was malignant typhus. But he finished the T{e^uiem. 
 
whether he heard it sung in its entirety is still disputed by musical 
 historians. Perhaps he did. It does not much matter if he did or not, 
 so far as legends and pictures are concerned. The saddest part of his 
 life was not his death, but his funeral. Hastily taken to the cemetery 
 by a few faithful ones, his actual resting place is not positively known, 
 a fitting commentary on the irony of human destiny. 
 
 But though the mortal part of Mozart has vanished, his music 
 lives for our delectation. No more charming tones were ever penned 
 by man; charming and erudite, dramatically powerful, yet bewitch- 
 ing. His T^on (^iovanni has not paled before the more exotic scores of 
 Richard Wagner. It held its own in company with the ^JM^agic Flute 
 during the accustomed temporary oblivion that so often follows the 
 death of a great artist. The vivacious operettas and one-act lyric 
 compositions are very popular in Europe. The Q minor and Q major 
 — the yupiter Symphony figure on the programs of every important 
 or provincial orchestra on the globe. The piano Qoncertos in © major 
 and © minor are prized by musical pianists, while the Sonatas are the 
 companion volume to Beethoven's — whose forerunner Mozart was 
 in the Q minor Fantasia and Sonata. The serenity, grace, blitheness of 
 this music with its native wood-note wild is without parallel. Mozart, 
 the sunny-souled, has his legend, and a lovely one it is. The picture of 
 the artist is more intimate than the conventional canvas. It speaks for 
 itself Mozart hears his inspired music, the music of the spheres, for 
 Death, the arch consoler, is playing the final movement in the com- 
 poser's gracious symphony of Life. 
 
IDA is instanced as an example of the parting of 
 the musical ways in Verdi's style. Perennially 
 popular operas asWagner's T^n^ and Meyerbeer's 
 Hugue7iotSy both tuneful pageants, are outdone by 
 (tAida with its massive decorations, imposing music 
 and romantic story. As a matter of fad;, it is replete 
 with more Meyerbeerisms than any opera since 
 J^<iAfricaine. The resemblance to Meyerbeer does not stop at the 
 libretto; there is the same flamboyancy and prediledion for full-blown 
 harmonies and lush melodies, exotic color. Wagner, too, influenced 
 the music. But it is the Verdi opera now most beloved by the public 
 and enjoys a vogue similar to that of // Tro\>atore in years gone by. 
 
 Contrary to general belief, ^ida was not written to celebrate the 
 completion of the Suez Canal, nor to open the Italian Opera House at 
 Cairo; the work happened to be a commission from the Khedive in the 
 early winter of 1871 with a libretto on Egyptian subjedis; hence the 
 accepted and erroneous version of its birth. The artist has selected the 
 third ad, the Nile scene with its tropical gorgeousness, its magic and 
 moonlight, its impassioned lovers and their betrayal into the hands of 
 the enemy through jealousy and treachery. Musically, it is the cli- 
 maderic of lyric rapture and abandonment and thrilling drama vsx'^ida. 
 The superficiality of Verdi's earlier operas should not blind us 
 to the promise and potency of their music. It is the music of a pas- 
 sionate Italian temperament, music hastily conceived, still more hastily 
 jotted down, and tumbled anyhow on the stage. Musical Italy was 
 altogether devoted to the voice. As for the dramatic unities, the orches- 
 tral commentary, the welding of adion, story and music, they were neg- 
 ligible. Melody, irrelevant, fatuous, trivial melody, and again melody, 
 was the desideratum. The wonder is that an orchestra was used, except 
 that it made more noise than a pianist; that costumes were worn, 
 
except that they looked braver, gayer in the flare of the footlights 
 than street attire. The singer and the song was the entire excuse for 
 opera, the rest was sheer waste. Consider the early Verdi opera. A 
 string of passionate tunes bracketed in the well-worn cavatina-caba- 
 letta manner; little attempt at following the book — and such awful 
 libretti! — for the orchestra, a strumming machine, without color, appo- 
 siteness, rhyme or reason, the music febrile and of a simian-like rest- 
 lessness. It was written for persons of little musical intelligence, who 
 must hum a tune, or ever after criticise it with contempt. * Verdi could 
 compose such tunes by the hundreds, vital dramatic tunes. Think 
 of the saddening waste of material in Oberto,J\(a^bucOyJ^mbarcli^ Srnani^ 
 dXacbet/i, Foscari, •^ttila^ J^isa ^Jt^iller and <^J)fCasnadierif Rigoletto^ 
 'Tr^'^iata^ II 'Tro\>atore perhaps hold the boards today because of 
 their intrinsic musical worth and dramatic effectiveness, but the mists 
 of oblivion are stealing over them. A star cast or Caruso alone saves 
 them. 
 
 Yet they prefigure the later Verdi. Otello is true music-drama. 
 The character drawing is that of a master of his art. The plot moves 
 in majestic splendor, the musical psychology is often subtle. At last 
 Verdi has flowered. His early music, smelling ranker of the soil, though 
 showing more thematic invention, was but the effort of a hot-headed 
 man of the footlights, a seeker after applause and money. But before 
 he wrote the score of Otello his ^Aida had been born. 
 
 Today the play's the thing to catch the conscience of a composer. 
 In Verdi's Falstaff^ the most noteworthy achievement in the art operatic 
 since T^ie ^JMeister singer, we are given true lyric comedy. In form it is 
 novel. It is not opera buffa, nor yet is it opera comique in the French 
 sense; indeed, it shows a marked deviation from its prototypes; even 
 the elaborate system of Wagnerian leading motives is not employed. It 
 is a new Verdi we hear. Not the Verdi of // Tro'\>atore, T^ra\>iata, 
 or <uiida, nevertheless a Verdi brimful of the joy of life, naive, yet 
 sophisticated. A marvelous compound is this musical comedy, in which 
 the music follows the text, and no concessions are made to the singers 
 or to the time-honored conventions of the operatic stage. The composer 
 has thrown overboard old forms and planted his victorious banner in 
 the country discovered by Mozart and conquered by Wagner. 
 
Cofjrighl, jgjS 
 
<S7^ C ^ D E £ S S OS^N 
 
 ITH the solitary exception of Chopin, the popu- 
 w^// liyA/larity of Mendelssohn's piano music has never been 
 ^\ \//w7^M] rivaled. The Songs without IVords were once idol- 
 >|ized by young misses, and with sufficient cause. 
 Ij They are agreeably melodic, the titles are char- 
 acteristic, they are eminently playable, well written, 
 and suffused with sentiment. The short-story in 
 music, gilt-edged lyricism, as they have been nicknamed, they seldom 
 disturb the placid drift of one's mood after an enjoyable dinner. First 
 aids to digestion in the more orderly and spacious times of our grand- 
 parents, they are a little foreign to the mood of the present haste- 
 loving generation. So behold them, with the oft-played piano con- 
 certos, handed over to the tender mercies of the pedagogue and 
 "young lady pupils." Some of these compositions deserve a better fate. 
 At least four of the Songs without IV irds appear at wide intervals on the 
 programs of public piano recitals. Paderewski occasionally plays a few 
 with much sentiment, and De Pachmann always won tumultuous ap- 
 plause for his finished performance of the Spinning Song^ and the l^mdo 
 Capriccioso — that shibboleth of the conservatory. Nevertheless, it is a 
 pity that the other compositions for the piano have become almost ob- 
 solete. The swiftness, delicacy, elfin lightness and brightness of the 
 character pieces should preserve them in the affections of amateurs. 
 They set off the polished talent of Mendelssohn to advantage; they 
 are true caprices; and are, as Bernard Shaw so happily says,"light without 
 heat." Mendelssohn never tears passion to tatters. He is too well-bred 
 to indulge in passion. He embodies the gentlemanly interest in music. 
 
 But the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy o{ A <iJ)(Cidsummer Night" s 
 Dream ! That is a tale of another color, a tale in which may be 
 found charm, fantasy and the "horns of elf-land faintly blowing." 
 Shakespeare's exquisite romanticism is here allied to an almost mirac- 
 
ulous formal sense in composition. And from the pen of a seventeen- 
 year-old lad! It would be hardly conceivable were it not the truth. 
 "Today or tomorrow," wrote Mendelssohn on July 7, 1826, "I shall 
 begin to dream the r^idsummer Night' s T>ream^^'^ and a month later 
 that dream was clothed in tone. The poetry of Shakespeare was given 
 its ideal musical interpretation. As Frederick Niecks has written, 
 What constitutes the chief originality of the overture is the creation 
 of the fairy world with its nimble, delicate and beautiful population." 
 Before our mind's eye are called up Oberon and Titania as they meet 
 in "grove or green by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen"; 
 the elves who, when their king and queen quarrel, creep into acorn 
 cups, their coats made of the leathern wings of rere-mice; peaseblos- 
 som, cobweb, moth, and mustard seed; and the roguish sprite Puck, 
 alias Robin Goodfellow, who delights in playing merry pranks. In 
 this especial genre, Mendelssohn surpassed himself, though he wrote 
 music of profounder import in the Hebrides O'^erture, and Elijah, 
 
 When recalling the tripping measures of this airy fairy comedy we 
 should not forget the humans — Duke Theseus and his betrothed, 
 Queen Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena the 
 lovers; and the comic Athenian citizens — Quince, Snug, Bottom, 
 Flute, Snout and Starveling; nor the immortal head of the Ass. The 
 incidental music written seventeen years afterward is in the inevitable 
 key of the play; the Scher^, th(otturno and JV zdding <i^arch. 
 
 The artist has obviously stressed the decorative element of this 
 fairy episode. The portrait of the composer musing over his youthful 
 masterpiece is symbolical, for the features of the boy Mendelssohn are 
 not as familiar as those of the dignified composer. He is the Prince 
 Fortunatus among musicians. The son of a wealthy man, the grandson 
 of a philosopher, his career was like a midsummer night's dream. 
 Happy he was from cradle to grave. Aptly was he named Felix. 
 
N 
 
HE most imposing figure in the history of music 
 I was George Frederic Handel; imposingin his music, 
 )his person physically imposing. He has been called, 
 and not without reason, the greatest of English com- 
 'posers, though German born. He still dominates 
 English music from Purcell to Elgar, notwithstand- 
 ing the advent of two such dangerous rivals near 
 this throne as Mendelssohn and Wagner. But the popularity of the 
 Messiah has never been threatened. It is perennial. Its composer, sturdy, 
 dogmatic, brooking no opposition, as choleric as Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
 to whom in certain charad:eristics, he bears a surprising resemblance, 
 was a glorified John Bull. The music he so fluently penned — and so 
 blithely appropriated from other men's compositions — is not always pro- 
 found, though harmonious, pleasantly sonorous, cheerful and healthy. 
 This particularly refers to the concertos, suites, fugues and overtures. 
 Occasionally melancholy is sounded, a sweet pathos that refledls the 
 spirit of his epoch, which was more decorative than poetic. But he 
 could sound the epical note, blow it big, sonorously and soul-stir- 
 ringly through his mighty trumpet, and how big, how exalted it all is 
 we need but listen to the Messiah. 
 
 Yet there was an introspective Handel, a Handel who is said to 
 have wept bitter tears while composing " He was despised and rejected 
 of men," in the Messiah. There the solitary suffering of the great tone 
 painter of primal music is expressed in exquisite accents. He, the 
 proudest man of his day, the favorite of two sovereigns, the honored 
 artist, had been despised and rejected in his love suit. The haughty, 
 domineering musician who seems so superb in his court costume, 
 powdered wig, sword at side, had his moments of depression and 
 brackish grief, despite his pugnacity, and brutality to his singers. (He 
 is said to have suspended an unfortunate lady, who had stubbornly 
 
refused to sing, out of the window till she surrendered. It sounds too 
 good to be true.) Sitting one morning at his harpsichord in his pleas- 
 ant music-room and near the open window whence penetrated the 
 street cries and noises of London, Handel preluded. His power of im- 
 provisation was almost as extraordinary as Johann Sebastian Bach's. 
 He idly taps the keys of the archaic harpsichord. Soft spring airs steal 
 in the apartment. Suddenly a fire engine passes, sounding its tinkling 
 signal of warning. The three iterated notes of B piqued the fancy of 
 the composer. He struck them out on the keyboard, three B's, and at 
 once followed the echoing answer from above. His imagination fired, 
 Handel put forth all the resources of his art; two, three and four 
 voices pursued each other in the labyrinthine cross-game of the fugue. 
 Like the palimpsest of some antique manuscript there peeped through 
 in tones of fire other meanings, other proclamations. The complex 
 contrapuntal knot was tied at its tightest. Then came the resolution 
 of the theme in booming octaves. It is like the concentrated roll of a 
 wave on a sullen, savage shore. We are listening to the E minor fugue^ 
 the Fire Fugue^ so christened by some one who had a barren fancy, for 
 this is no mere imitative musical etching depicting the flight of a fire 
 engine, but the creation of emotional art. 
 
 It vibrates with feeling, and the thrice repeated B is but the 
 masterful assertion of passionate love and anger hot from the heart of 
 this man whose pride was like Lucifer's. There is melodic sublimity 
 and the atmosphere of the vast ocean, which pulses in magnificent 
 rhythms. One forgets the science — Bach's fugues are more logical and 
 severe — for the mystery : Handel spilled his great soul in the Fire Fugue, 
 
* 
 
"RJJ "BINS T'e/JA^ 
 
 NTON RUBINSTEIN plays for the great White 
 Czar and Czarina of all the Russias ! It is like read- 
 ing from the page of some forgotten romance, yet 
 it is not so many years ago that a Czar and 
 Czarina sat upon the throne of the Russian empire 
 and occasionally lent a gracious ear to the piano 
 playing of Rubinstein. The old order has changed 
 and czars have gone out of fashion. Sadder still to the lover of music 
 is the fac^l that with the death of Rubinstein no artist of his emotional 
 caliber has appeared upon the scene, nor is there likely to be one. 
 That prodigious trinity, Liszt, Rubinstein, and Tausig, represent the 
 romantic school ot playing. They had all the virtues and few of the 
 vices of the hierarchy. Rubinstein, an impressionist at the keyboard, 
 an impressionist whether he improvised or composed — in his case usu- 
 ally the same thing — was the most emotional pianist of them all. Other 
 men have revealed more intellectuality in their interpretations — con- 
 sider Von Biilow; have displayed more versatility — there is Liszt; 
 have possessed a more polished technique — Karl Tausig. But Rubin- 
 stein outpaced the others in his overwhelming passion. He was vol- 
 canic. He was as torrid as midday in the tropics. His touch melted 
 the heart in a Chopin nod:urne, and he could thunder like a storm 
 cloud, thunder and lighten. He knew all schools, all styles and all 
 their nuances. The plangency of his tone, fingers of velvet, fingers of 
 bronze, the sweep, audacity and tenderness of his many styles — ah I 
 there was but one Anton Rubinstein. 
 
 Behold him then as pictured by the fancy of the artist, sitting in 
 the center of Petrograd's court circle. He seems inspired. What is he 
 playing? Possibly one of those tiny portraits he named J^menoi- 
 Ostrowy'' the Isle of Kamenoi, which stands, a pleasant green oasis in 
 the river Neva, at Petrograd. It is a recreation park and boasts a palace. 
 
The music, like so many pieces of Rubinstein, became popular, too 
 popular, as did his famous ^y}(Celody. Improvised, like the majority 
 of his piano compositions, it is not destined to immortality. The same 
 may be said of the larger works, the symphonies, operas, even the 
 chamber-music. The reason is not far to seek. Haste in com^position 
 is not alone the cause of the decay and dissolution of his music. It is 
 the lack of personal profile. He wrote, not like Moussorgsky, genuine 
 Russian music, but music that smacks too often of the lamp academic. 
 He detested Wagner, nevertheless Wagner lives and the music of 
 Rubinstein is already short of breath. More's the pity, for he is essen- 
 tially a melodist. He shook melodies out of his sleeve. His songs are 
 charming. He fairly fascinates us with his piano music, yet the present 
 generation votes him old-fashioned and hardly worth the trouble of 
 study. So, this is the tragedy of a man whose life, like Liszt's, was a 
 blazing torchlight procession through the broad avenues of the world, 
 and now become a candle that wavers before each critical wind down 
 the Corridor of Time. But living he was a symbol of power, and when 
 he smote the keys his music was magical. Thrice eloquent he plays 
 for the beautiful women who surround him. His leonine mane is less 
 disheveled in the more decorative atmosphere of the palace. He is 
 barbaric when he wills, and those Calmuck features can become pas- 
 sionate, but here he coos as softly as a sucking dove. And the exqui- 
 site creatures sigh, the Czar is pensive, the Czarina conceals her dis- 
 quieted soul behind the conventional court mask. It is a glittering 
 episode in the northern Babylon, in the life of a noble artist, in the 
 life of a Czar. But the handwriting is there on the wall for those who 
 can read, and in letters of fire — z^^itenef Tekel! Upharsin I 
 
Cofjrighl, iqiS 
 
HAT is this apparition in the darkened skies that 
 flies before the storm-blasts ? A father rides in the 
 night on a fleet horse, across his arm his sick child. 
 Behind them is the grisly King of Terror, Death. 
 The howling winds deaden the whispered words of 
 the Erlking, but the child hears and his pitiful little 
 body shudders; he is fainting with the fear of im- 
 pending calamity. The thud of the horse's hoofs, though he treads air, 
 does not dull the hearing of the doomed one. Thou lovely child, come 
 with me to my magic abode, where flowers and glittering costumes 
 await theel There my daughter shall weave for your enraptured eyes 
 the silken paces of the dance, weave garlands, singing haunting songs 
 all the while I But the child is terrified. The voice that filters through 
 the porchcv, of his ears has a sinister sound. He sadly mistrusts these 
 promises of bliss. He longs to stay with his father, who presses him so 
 closely to his bosom. He clings all the more as through the shriek of 
 the infernal gale which blows from the mouth of the tomb the voice 
 redoubles its seductiveness. Come, lovely child, come play with me in 
 the enchanted land of dreams! My father, my father, cries the child, 
 don't you hear, don't you see the Erlking with his crown, who begs 
 me to leave you? My child, answers the father, it is the mist and wind 
 that fill your eyes and ears! Have no fear! I hold you fast! But father, 
 my father, he threatens now! Ah! father, he has sadly wounded me! 
 For answer the father rides the swifter. When he reaches his home a 
 dead child he carries in his arms. Death has outstripped him in the 
 eternal race for a human soul. 
 
 Goethe's immortal ballad has been often set to music, but to 
 Franz Schubert must be awarded the prize. He is as much identified 
 with the Erlking as the poet himself; and Goethe did not even ac- 
 knowledge the composition when sent to him. It was composed by 
 
Schubert at the age of fifteen and is set down as his opus i. Such pre- 
 cocity has seldom been rivaled. 
 
 In the picture it is the mature Schubert who faces his desk, music 
 paper before him, poring over his notes, for the artist justly enough 
 has given us the portrait by which he is best known. The fierce rush 
 of the horse, whose hoofs reverberate like the octaves of the thrilling 
 accompaniment, evoke the tragic atmosphere, and the fantastic noc- 
 turnal spectres. Surely Schubert was the first Romantic in tone, as 
 well as the greatest composer of songs. His melodies sing in the heart 
 long after they have ceased humming in the ears. Poor, timid, homely 
 — that is, if a genius can ever be ugly — Schubert! Despised and rejected, 
 his love scorned, his music at first unplayed, unsung, he is yet the one 
 composer who shall remain eternally young. Schubert is romance. 
 Even when he is prosy his music prose is tipped with lyric gold. On 
 his sick bed Beethoven acknowledged that he was the divine spark; 
 he could have said, tongues of fire. Like Beethoven, he loved the 
 fields and woods, lakes and rivers, clouds and moonlight, and like 
 Beethoven he saw the stars. Schumann told the truth of Franz Schu- 
 bert when he wrote: "His profound musical soul wrote notes where 
 others employ words.'' He is the poet of youthful, loving hearts. 
 
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
 
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